


A fire, a burning flame

by maybetwice



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 15:52:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17046515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/maybetwice
Summary: A year after her father recalls her to the Old Kingdom to help him defeat the Greater Dead creature, Kerrigor, Abhorsen-in-Waiting Sabriel sets out on a quest of her own.





	A fire, a burning flame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemonsharks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, lemonsharks!

At that golden hour of sunset, the Ratterlin Delta sparkled with broken sunlight glinting across the great river as it divided into the half-dozen major tributaries that split again and again like blood vessels before it finally fed into the sea. Even the thick layer of snow on the ground glowed with the light of it, seeming warm and inviting for only this fleeting moment. It was this light which glimmered across the blue-silver sheen of a winged shape the size of a condor, sparkling with an iridescent gleam before the bird-shape sighed down to the earth with the sound of Charter-infused whistles.

The forest below was already cast in the dim shades of dusk. The human figure that emerged from the flying craft drew a glowing Charter mark in the area above her head, which cast a bright, blue-white gleam on the snowy ground around her boots. She touched the wing, as if saying a prayer of thanks, and then lifted three items from the smaller, less comfortable seat behind the pilot’s. A sword, a pack, and a long belt with seven pouches that encased seven bells with only their polished mahogany handles exposed. 

The woman put on each of these and, after she had done so, a pair of pointed, white and pink ears peeked up from the seat of the Paperwing, followed by the form of a small, white cat bearing a red leather collar and a little bell that gave an merry ring when the cat leapt a low-hanging branch nearby.

“Well, you’re a far better pilot than your father,” said the cat, stretching out his paws and arching upward. He clawed the bark of the tree with deep satisfaction when he was finished and yawned widely.

Sabriel glanced upward for only a moment before returning her attention to the forest around them. “Be sure to tell him so,” she answered, still searching the trees around them as she took a step forward, careful to keep the setting sun to her left. “It’s so dark already, but I might be better without the Charter light.”

“I don’t know why we came out here, anyway.” 

“Mogget.” 

“We could just as well have left when there might have been daylight to search.”

“We might have.”

“And we have no way of knowing if this will help or only make things worse.”

She did not answer this time, choosing instead to dim the Charter light and continue walking, leaving Mogget to follow. It was true that it would be easier to search in the daylight, but day was short during winter in the Old Kingdom, and Sabriel rather preferred to avoid flying at night. 

“There might be Dead, Sabriel,” Mogget argued, but he followed after her through the trees anyway. 

“Are there?”

“Not that I see.” 

“Then keep looking,” she answered. Mogget could see perfectly well in even this light and, while Sabriel was a competent Abhorsen-in-Waiting who had read through the Book of the Dead, he had the superior knowledge of the Dead that came from centuries of service to the Abhorsen. “Although, I don’t expect to see any in this part of the Kingdom.”

Mogget grunted irritably. “Kerrigor may be vanquished, but it would be the height of arrogance to assume his followers are not scrambling to carve out a fraction of his glory. The Kingdom remains vulnerable, and if even one were able to claim the blood of the Abhorsen-in-waiting, one of the Great Charters--”

“Just keep looking for Dead, Mogget.”

Mogget wasn’t entirely wrong, though. Much had been accomplished in the year after Sabriel had completed her schooling in Ancelstierre, after she had returned to assume the her apprenticeship under her father as Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Terciel had prepared with the Clayr to begin work the moment Sabriel returned, and it was only together they were able to hunt and destroy the body of the Greater Dead being, Kerrigor, who had been responsible for centuries of turmoil in the Kingdom. 

Absent such a figure to unify them, the hordes of the Dead Kerrigor amassed splintered. Much of the past year had been devoted to purging the Dead and Free Magic adepts from the Kingdom, reclaiming communities as sprawling as the capital city of Belisaere to the smallest villages, whose Charter stones had been destroyed over the century. It was exhausting work, and it seemed to Sabriel that there was no end to it, not with an Abhorsen and an Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Not even if there were three of each. Not with the Great Stones in Belisaere broken with no one to repair them.

And so, there could be Dead to contend with in the forest south of the Sickle Wood for Sabriel to put down. There were no villages here, although the areas to the south and east were teeming with life, little settlements that clung to the safety of the great Ratterlin, or the promise of the sea. Nothing for the Dead to feed upon but the smaller lives of the animals that dwelled in this place, and even those were scarce in the winter. 

Sabriel walked in silence for several hours, waiting to sense the Dead nearby, or else the fount of Charter magic she sought. Mogget was uncharacteristically silent, but then he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Still, the cat-creature seemed to like Sabriel, because he often accompanied her in her work around the Kingdom. 

By the time darkness had overcome even the furthest line of the horizon, Sabriel began to wonder if perhaps Mogget had been right to suggest they search by day. Not that she necessarily knew what it was she was looking for. The map in Abhorsen’s library was rather old and several of the settlements referenced in a past Abhorsen’s journal no longer existed and had not for over a hundred years. Sabriel could only hope that the clues she had found were good, and that she had navigated to the right end of the caves she was looking for. 

There were caves along the way in the forest, but they were small and rather new in geological terms. After exploring the mouth of the fourth of these, she leaned against the cold stones, peering into the somewhat warmer darkness, and at last suggested, “We could make camp here and continue in the morning.”

“No swift water, no Charter stone to anchor your diamond of protection for miles. What could go wrong?” 

Sabriel took this to mean that Mogget concurred and set down her pack near the mouth of the cave. Through the canopy of trees, she could see no stars, only thick clouds, heavy with snow. If it snowed in the night, at least they would have some shelter. She gathered wood for a fire by the entrance to keep from smoking up the cave and built it to sustain them through the night while Mogget stalked the forest around them, searching for some unexpecting rodent to eat, no doubt. Finally, she cast a diamond of protection around them, breathing with relief and effort when it was done.

Dinner was a quiet affair. He had no need to eat, but Sabriel gave several dried fish to Mogget anyway, who frowned at them as if he disapproved. They nevertheless disappeared quickly. 

Warm and sated, as much as she could be while camping in the forest instead of home at her father’s house, Sabriel leaned against a smooth rock, staring into the fire. She was much more tired than she had supposed she would be when they departed the Abhorsen’s house earlier in the day. Not even a full day of flying. Barely more than a couple of hours travel by foot. She would have to do better than that if she had any hope of accomplishing her goal. 

“Do you suppose we might be close?”

“Practically there,” said Mogget from beside the fire, his eyes closed. 

“Really?”

“In planetary terms,” he drawled lazily, cracking one eye to look at her with the impression of one rather amused at one’s own joke. “This cave system is only a hundred miles long, perhaps thirty miles wide.” 

“And there could be Dead.” 

“Oh, certainly there will be.” 

Mogget added nothing more to this, not even when Sabriel audibly strangled a desire to throw something at him. Instead, she bundled up a spare tunic from her pack for a pillow and lay out just far enough to avoid being burned by any popping from the fire. It was warm, and she was asleep quickly.

She stood in a hazy, decaying bog extending for miles in every direction, the landscape smudged and grey like the precincts of Death. Although Sabriel first felt warm from the nearby fire, it seemed even that the chill of the river in Death permeated her dreams, leeching away heat and life alike. In the distance, she could see figures moving around, grey specters in rich clothing several centuries out of style that paid her no attention as she sloshed toward them. 

_I should be silent,_ she thought, _Or something will hear me._ Instinctively, she reached for the bells at her chest, but the bandolier she wore at nearly every waking moment was gone in the dream. Sabriel stopped and searched the ground for the bells, and spotted them just a step beyond her arm’s reach. She tried to move toward them, but her boots sunk immediately into the deep, sucking mud and up to her ankles before she could do anything. 

Sabriel struggled to pull up one of her feet, but when she shifted to one leg, the other sunk deeper. It grew colder around her, so cold that surely the mud would freeze and she might be able to wrench free. But the mud gripped harder the more she struggled. 

The bells. She needed the bells. It was a thought she could not stop, an imperative driving her from deep in her gut. The mud approached her knees, and Sabriel flung herself forward, her fingers brushing the worn, soft leather of the bandolier, just within her reach, if only she could reach an inch more, not even half an inch more. She collapsed into the mud and felt her whole body sinking fast. Her lungs burned for breath, but it was the cold, the terrible cold--

 _I cannot die like this. I will not die like this._

With effort that did not seem her own, Sabriel screamed out a master Charter mark for clearing and unbinding, for purifying and freedom, and her eyes opened to the world of the living in the same dim gray as there had been in her dream. The fire was now considerably smaller than it had been before without the nurturing of her diamond of protection, which was gone entirely.

More immediately, however, was the Dead creature bent over her with a long tongue extended toward her face. Its body was long and serpentine, with a human head and human arms jutted out from its sides like a centipede, but its fingers ended in sharp points. Some awful part of her brain that had the perfect recall of an exemplary schoolgirl could silently recite the pages of the Book of the Dead that detailed this monster. It was called a Quieneb, a powerful Lesser Dead construct animated with a Free Magic blood sacrifice, and it had the peculiar ability to bewitch its prey, leaving them placid and helpless before it could be devoured.

At the same time she remembered the name and form of the monster, Sabriel screamed and reached her hand into the fire. She smelled her garments and skin burning before she felt the ripple of agony to her wrist, but Sabriel wielded one of the flaming branches as a sword, thrusting it upward into the Quieneb’s chest. It screamed horribly, but she threw herself away from it, toward the back of the cave, scrabbling to her feet with one hand searching for the cave wall behind her. She did not even dare look for Mogget -- _where was he?_ \-- but reached for the Charter marks for immolation, trying to remember if fire could save her and deciding it did not matter.

Sabriel, it turned out, was extremely lucky.

The Quieneb screeched and the cave was filled with the biting, acrid stench of Free Magic and burnt, decaying flesh. Sabriel found a furry mound in the shadows around her feet and was simultaneously relieved and horrified to find Mogget there, still sleeping soundly. She threw aside the burning branch and drew her sword, Charter marks and fire racing down like oil drops from the hilt to the point of the blade. 

“Wake up!” she screamed, scooping up Mogget and tucking him under her arm. 

The Quieneb slashed at her, grazing her exposed cheek, ripping through her surcoat before its claws sparked against her scaled mail shirt. Whatever power the Quieneb held over Mogget broke with her next Charter spell, because he yowled, angrily twisting out of her arms and spitting in the direction of the beast. 

“I told you there would be Dead!” he hissed, his tail several times larger than its usual size. 

“We’re trapped,” said Sabriel, her hands searching the front of her bandolier for the bell she most needed. Using the bells was necessary, but dangerous, since it could attract other Dead in the area that sought the vitality her blood offered.

With the benefit of some space between her and the Quieneb, Sabriel could see that it was not a fresh construct, most likely it was one of the creatures created by Kerrigor or one of his lieutenants that had endured on its own by preying on smaller creatures. Sabriel, a young and powerful Charter mage, had probably seemed too tempting to resist. It had probably not even minded the bells on her chest, if it had even noticed them at all.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mogget sputtered furiously next to her, winding between her feet. “Bind it and banish it.”

Sabriel’s fingers found the handle of the second-largest bell, pausing to still her cold, shivering fingers before sliding them into the mouth of the bell to keep it from ringing prematurely. She drew a breath that froze like ice in her lungs and sheathed her sword, as the Quieneb reared up to slash at her again. 

She released the clapper and rang the bell, listening to the rich tones of Saraneth echoing through the cave and pulsing around her. As the bell faded, she returned the bell to its pouch and reached for Kibeth, then for Ranna. They were a complicated pair to ring in tandem, but as all Abhorsens had their favorites of the bells, Sabriel favored these.

Not more than a foot from her, the Quieneb shuddered and shrank away from her, shrieking horribly with its decayed vocal cords. As it had tried to do to her, Sabriel willed the creature to submit, to walk back into Death, and release itself into the power of the river that would carry it through the nine precincts. 

When it was gone, Sabriel sank to her knees, returning Ranna and Kibeth to the bandolier, then rubbing her fingers over her eyes. 

“That was close,” she said at last, when she heard the tinkling noise of Mogget’s collar at her elbow. 

“Mm, yes,” drawled Mogget, his little, cold cat nose pressing into her cheek “But I smell something interesting in this cave.”.

Sabriel raised her hand and cast the marks for healing into her cheek as he scrabbled up to wrap around her neck. Outside the cave entrance, it was snowing heavily enough to cover over the Quieneb’s tracks. “You didn’t sense anything earlier?” 

“I was tired.” Mogget said dismissively, flicking his tail by her ear. “And the snow dulls my senses. That Quieneb must have been stalking us for some time.”

With a sigh, Sabriel looked longingly back at the fire. It was still dark outside, but she had the sense that it was very early in the morning. She did not think she would sleep again until she was home again in the safety of the house, anyway.

The cave was dark, but the temperature was comfortable and Sabriel felt soothed, like she had dipped into a pool of Charter magic. And sure enough, if she looked closer at the walls, veins of translucent grey Charter marks raced alongside and ahead of them as she walked deeper into the cave. 

“This must be it,” she whispered to Mogget. 

He did not answer, except to prick her neck with his claws when a Charter sending appeared before them, clothed in a crimson surcoat that was too faded to make out the pattern. It was likely a rather old sending. The Charter marks that raced along the surface of what would be its skin seemed to bleed into the surcoat, as if the sending had forgotten the details of its construction. It gestured to the two of them and stood straighter in their path.

“Hello,” greeted Sabriel, reaching up to touch the Charter mark on her forehead. It glowed briefly, and the Charter marks on the wall around them grew brighter, fading only when Sabriel’s mark did. When the sending nodded at her and stepped to the side to clear her path was when Sabriel saw that it held a very long halberd in one hand. 

“It’s good that sending hasn’t forgotten the Charter in your bloodline the way it’s forgotten everything else,” sniffed Mogget, his head swiveling back around to face the path ahead of them. 

It grew brighter and brighter as they walked, first with the same pale grey marks from before, which then turned fiery red, orange, and yellow, before fading to the blue of a sky. By the time Sabriel and Mogget emerged from the long tunnel, there was almost no discernible difference between the color of the Charter marks around them and the morning sky above. The effect was lost on her, though, for they stood in an enormous sinkhole and before them was a flotilla of enormous, wooden ships. 

“This is it,” breathed Sabriel, unable to stop herself from smiling while Mogget leapt down from her neck. “The royal burial ground.”

She walked slowly between the ships, first looking for what had brought her here before she lost herself in studying every detail of the ships around her. Although she had studied the details of Holehallow for months, reading everything she could from the journals of past Abhorsens, studying the illustrations some of her artistic ancestors had left of the magnificent site, it could not compare to the real thing. The Charter was present here, infused in every board, every nail used to construct the ships. It was in the disguised net of magic above the sinkhole. It was in the sendings that guarded the royal dead of the Old Kingdom. 

And those who were not dead.

Sabriel drew her hand back from the nearest ship, checking the position of the morning sun to orient herself. And there, just where she read that it would be, was the one she was looking for.

At the head of it was the figurehead of a man, easily overlooked until one realized that he was too detailed, too life-like to have been carved by human hands. The coils of his hair had a disheveled quality never reflected in art, swirling gracelessly from his face. There were the smallest of scars etched into his hands from sword practice, and another by his mouth. The hint of a Charter mark in the center of his forehead. He was entirely naked, but Sabriel did not linger on this detail about him. It did not matter, because it was his expression was what finally made Sabriel look away uncomfortably. It was too terrifying to have been intended for a place like Holehallow. It was not altogether unsuited for the state of the Kingdom, though. 

“Terciel expects that he’s quite mad,” said Mogget in a soft voice, meeting her at the bow of the ship, peering at the wooden figurehead with unblinking green eyes. “It might not work.” 

Sabriel reached her hand out to cup his snarling cheek, thinking of all the hope that could be contained in this singular man. She thought of the Dead across the kingdom, the broken stones in the wake of Kerrigor’s centuries of terror. There was nothing to stop the deterioration of the Charter without the Royal family to restore and preserve the Great stones in Belisaere. All her father’s work, all Sabriel’s work, would be for nothing if they could not work to restore what had been broken.

It might not work, but the kingdom could afford for her not to try.

“King Torrigan the First,” she said, tasting the words on her tongue and lifting her hand to draw the first Charter mark of many she would need to free him. “Long may he reign.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Walt Whitman's 'The Wound-Dresser'


End file.
